Ben Grubb

The union representing Telstra field staff says the telco's copper-wire network is "beyond repair" and "an absolute disgrace", casting new doubts over the federal government's plans to use it to deliver faster broadband in its mixed-technology national broadband network (NBN).

The union has provided photographs that appear to show a number of Telstra pits in the Illawara region, in NSW, where recycled plastic bottles and bags have been used to insulate wires. Photos also show tangled wires, wires submerged in water and wet even when inside the plastic shieds.

"It's like grandfather's axe; It's had five new handles and three new heads. When it breaks, we replace the broken bit. So it's much the same as it always has been and always will be," Mr Lee said.

Mr Murphy described Mr Lee's comments as "an absolute bollock".

"It doesn't matter which capital city of the country you live in, or country town, as soon as they get a dosage of rain, up goes the amount of outages of customer services or internet faults. And that is due to the state of the Telstra network. It is nearly beyond repair."

On Wednesday, a Telstra spokeswoman told Fairfax Media the company put temporary fixes in place "from time to time" to ensure continuity of service until a permanent repair was available.

"How many [temporary fixes] are in place and techniques used will differ at different times and circumstances," the spokeswoman said.

The age of the copper network varied "greatly", the spokeswoman added.

"But with the rolling remediation program we have in place to restore and replace copper it would rarely be older than 30 years."

Good for 'another 100' years

Mr Murphy said Telstra would need to invest "millions and millions" of dollars to bring the copper network up to scratch to survive the next 20 years. This was despite Telstra chief executive officer David Thodey saying in June that the network would "keep going for another 100" years.

"The union finds it alarming that the CEO or anyone within Telstra believes the copper network is in shape to last another 100 years," Mr Murphy said.

Mr Murphy said the network was in a bad state because Telstra field staff were measured on the number of jobs they did each day and not on the quality of the work.

"Telstra over the last five to ten years since privatisation has driven a system of as many jobs per day and pushing the guys to the next job at the expense of quality customer service," Mr Murphy said.

"The [field staff] are not left with any amount of time to sit on the job and fix the job properly. They are simply band-aiding the customers' repair and being pushed to the next job. And managers' bonuses are being based on the amount of jobs workers are doing per day."

But Telstra's spokeswoman disputed this, saying quality workmanship was measured as well as quantity.

Mr Lee's comments come as Telstra prepares to renegotiate its $11 billion national broadband network deal with the Coalition government, which wants to make use of the copper in its fibre-to-the-node rollout for 71 per cent of premises. The node-based network uses up to several hundred metres of existing copper wires running from the local node to each premise.

However, there were already millions of people accessing ADSL broadband services through Telstra's customer access network, as the copper network is known, Dr Switkowski said.

"That suggests to me the network is robust still and the concerns that are expressed about ... the network [that it] may not be the basis for the next generation broadband platform, I think, are misinformed," Dr Switkowski said.

Labor Senator Kate Lundy asked if NBN Co would get access to accurate data about the condition and quality of Telstra's network before it re-enters negotiations or decides whether to ditch Labor's plan of rolling out fibre-to-the-home for 93 per cent of premises in favour of rolling out fibre-to-the-node for 71 per cent.

"If we don't have data in detail by the time of the drafting of the review then assumptions will be made ... it is the task of one of the advisory groups to do that," Dr Switkowski replied.

NBN Co's new chief operating officer, Greg Adcock, confirmed at the hearing that NBN Co would test parts of Telstra's copper underground network before it made any definitive moves to a fibre-to-the-node design.

"The current thinking is that there would be testing done. Whether it informs the strategic review or whether the strategic review makes some assumptions to be then tested, I think that is the way we would frame it at this point," Mr Adcock said.

The federal government will either buy the network or lease it. Buying it would likely require the government-owned NBN Co to maintain the network, while leasing it could potentially see that left to Telstra.

The state of Australia's copper network has long been a focus because critics say that it has deteriorated and might not provide the download speed of 100 megabits per second the Coalition eventually wants to deliver over it, with technologies like VDSL2 vectoring.

The Coalition has promised to replace any copper that doesn't achieve the speeds promised but critics say the true state of the copper network is not known, and its costly replacement could blowout the Coalition's NBN costings.